Poll shows the best is yet to come

All you suffering youth, take heart. You might be working for peanuts at an entry-level job, living at home with your parents and wondering if you’ll ever get a chance to spread your wings and take flight in this lousy economy. Fear is rampant and you just know someone, somewhere is walking around with an “End of Days” sign.

But according to a new Gallup poll, you have a bright future ahead. You’ll just have to wait until you’re older. Much older.

Pollsters took the “feel good” temperature of respondents by asking them if they felt “a lot” of the following emotions: laughing, learning, doing something interesting, being treated with respect, enjoyment, happiness, worry, sadness, anger and stress. They found 31 percent of those 60 years and older scored highest on the upbeat emotions. And at least 30 percent of those in succeeding age groups, through age 99, attested to feeling good about life.

Young ’uns, not so much: Fewer than 1 in 3 Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 score high on the emotional health scale. For those in their mid-20s through their 50s, emotional health is slightly lower but stable. No surprise there: This is, after all, the portion of the population trying to find a job (or keep one), buy a home and raise a family — when hiring is frozen and salaries and benefits are shrinking.

So who are the enchanted elders? For one thing, they’ve survived a succession of booms and busts. They’ve likely acquired perspective that many young people don’t have.

At the oldest end of the scale are people who still have memories of the Depression and World War II. At the young end of the old-age scale are people who lived through the upheaval of the 1960s and into the 1970s: Vietnam, political assassinations, recessions, gas shortages, Watergate, not to mention disco, polyester shirts and shag haircuts.
So what are the lessons we can draw from Gallup’s profile of “the young and the restless, and the old and content”? Nothing anyone hasn’t heard before. But they bear repeating:

Youth is wasted on the young. And every day above ground is a good one.